Chapter 14 Seraphine
The provost was just the start of whatever Andreas was planning.
This was how it began. A corpse or two to whet his audience’s fear, a royal entrance followed by a dollop of pontification and then – rampant bloodshed.
‘We need to find the prince,’ she said with mounting urgency.
Anouk turned on her heel. ‘Wait. I’ve lost Theo.’
‘Where will we start?’ said Ransom.
She rifled through the possibilities. She didn’t know the Silver-tongue well, but she had had the distinct displeasure of once finding herself inside his head.
In a dream, not long ago, she had been Prince Andreas, a thirsty young scholar clambering up the Appoline clock tower, screaming desperately into the storm, begging for power.
‘The clock tower,’ she said with a jolt. ‘That’s where everything changed for him.’
Ransom turned on his sister. ‘Find the other two and get out of here. Tear the place down if you have to; just don’t spend another minute in this ballroom.’ Whatever Andreas had planned, they weren’t sticking around for it. ‘We’ll meet you by the clock tower.’
Anouk melted into the crowd with a whisper of indigo.
They made for the doors, Ransom unfurling his shadows as they went. The guards there never saw his adders strike. They were dead when Sera reached them, slumped together in the doorway. She flinched as she stepped over them.
Ransom didn’t look back.
She knew. Saints, she knew, there was no other way, but these soldiers weren’t in their right minds. They were puppets.
She fingered the necklace of Lightfire under her collar. ‘Next time, can we try to—’
‘I won’t risk it.’ His eyes blazed. ‘I won’t risk you.’
He was so deep in thrall to his magic Ransom wouldn’t even hear of it. When the next pair of guards fell, choking on the dark, she fisted her necklace, hating herself as she stepped over them.
Guilt prickled under her skin as they made for the next corridor. Six more soldiers collapsed in the blink of an eye, and the Saint of Nightmares never even broke his stride. It was terrifying this version of Ransom.
A mercenary on the hunt for his prey, those golden eyes like warning lamps in the gathering dark.
You made him.
She huffed a breath, trying to push the dead bodies from her mind.
Ransom’s brow rippled. ‘This is war, spitfire.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m not going to apologize for it.’
‘I don’t expect you to.’
But don’t you feel it? she wanted to ask. Doesn’t it hurt you?
He reached for her hand and she gave it, pressing her lips together. She had pulled the darkness from his soul. She had no right to ask him to shove it back in.
They walked on, down one meandering hallway after another, where even the sconces recoiled from him.
More pyres greeted them in the inner courtyard. A light rain was falling, as though the heavens were trying in vain to extinguish them.
The clock tower appeared across the quadrangle. The roof was still shattered from where the lightning had struck it, the top floor cracked open like an egg. A noose hung from an exposed beam there.
‘That must be where Andreas hanged the Proctor.’ Sera’s voice was hollow.
‘Good of him to leave it up there for us,’ said Ransom. ‘We can hang him like a bauble from his own clock tower.’
Gripping his dagger, he kicked the door in, bracing himself as he stepped over the threshold. ‘Stay behind me,’ he said, sending out a raft of shadows. Adders skittered up the spiralling stairwell, and they followed close behind, their footsteps whispering on the stone.
In the distance, thunder rumbled.
Twin blades sliced through the dark as a pair of Rose-bearers leaped from an alcove halfway up the stairs.
‘RANSOM!’
He dodged the blow. By the time their swords landed, their wielders were dead. Darkness consumed them, licking the light from their eyes.
As Ransom bent to disarm the corpses, more footsteps sounded behind them.
Sera ducked on instinct, bringing her own dagger around in an arc.
Steel met flesh as she found her mark, jamming it into the soldier’s side.
Blood spurted as she pulled it back out, jamming her foot into his chest. He tumbled backwards, knocking the rest of the soldiers from their feet.
With a flick of his wrist, Ransom killed them all.
Trembling now, she wiped her brow.
He pulled her against his chest, pressing a breathless kiss to her hair. ‘All right?’
She clutched his forearm. ‘I’m all right.’
The stairwell was quiet, save for the staccato of their breaths.
Sera cleaned her dagger on the edge of her dress. Streaks of blood spattered the feathers.
When she looked up, Ransom was smiling at her. ‘Is it wrong that I was into that?’
She ceded a nervous laugh. ‘Which part?’
‘When you shoved your heel into his chest, and made a bowling ball of his body.’
A quick glance over her shoulder revealed more corpses than she’d expected.
‘Thanks for taking care of the others,’ she managed.
‘It’s what I’m here for.’
You’re more than this, she wanted to say. More than murder.
But not tonight.
If Ransom wasn’t here, if he wasn’t like this, she’d be dead twice over by now.
They continued on side by side, her hand in his as they climbed towards the gathering storm. Sera braced herself for another ambush, but when they reached the top, there was nothing but the wild crash of the elements.
And two figures they were not expecting.
Nadia and Lisette.
Dressed in a long black coat and with her hair piled in a tight knot upon her head, Nadia was a study in sharp angles. Her arms were folded across her chest and her dark eyes were foreboding.
Lisette was smiling without an ounce of warmth. The last time Sera had seen the Dagger who’d replaced Ransom as Head of the Order of Daggers, she’d stormed the ballroom at the Summer Palace and brewed the shadows that killed Bibi and so many others that night.
‘What a clever prince,’ she said, licking her teeth. ‘He said you’d come looking for him here.’
Nadia glared at them. ‘Fools.’
Through the shattered wall behind her, Sera could make out the north wing of the Appoline library across the quad.
Lamplight flickered in its stained-glass windows, glinting off the twirling skirts of Andreas’s guests.
The ball remained in full swing, the poor villagers of Castellan still playing out their parts.
Ransom’s hand tightened around hers. ‘Where is he?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ taunted Lisette.
Nadia’s eyes darted.
Too late, Sera felt another presence in the tower.
The hairs on the back of her neck rose as Lark stepped in from the narrow walkway. The Saint of Corpses was soaked through, his thinning auburn curls plastered to the sides of his face. He smiled, revealing gapped rows of rotting teeth.
‘You didn’t think he’d risk it all, did you?’ He sneered. ‘Meet you alone in a dark tower all by himself?’
Ransom’s face was a mask of impassivity, but Sera felt his frustration in the crush of his fingers.
‘His glittering little trap has worked well, has it not?’ crooned Lisette. ‘The rats have gobbled up their poisonous cheese.’
To hell with it. Sera fired her dagger at her.
Nadia knocked it away. ‘Play nice, Seraphine.’
‘Fuck you, traitor.’
‘Well, this was fun.’ Lark’s gaze slid to Sera. ‘Time to go, little Maker.’
‘Over your own dead body,’ snarled Ransom.
An insolent shrug. ‘I’m already halfway there.’
Ransom skewered a finger at Nadia. ‘And hers.’
The shadows shifted, the swell of Ransom’s magic rippling against Sera’s spine. Lark might be immune to the Saint of Nightmares, but Nadia and Lisette were not.
The Necromancer took a measured step forward, shielding them with his body.
His grin turned menacing, his words edged with latent fury.
‘That,’ he growled, ‘was the last threat you’ll ever make.’